I graduated from the University of Washington in 2008 with a degree in Business Administration (Marketing), and immediately entered the professional online marketing world. I founded AudienceBloom in April 2010, and have since become a columnist for Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Watch, and Huffington Post. My personal blog is located at AudienceBloom.com/blog. I guest lecture for marketing classes at the University of Washington, and currently reside in Seattle, WA.

How Do I Get Top Rankings For My Keywords Fast?

One of my clients recently asked me this question, and I truly wish there was a step-by-step procedure I could offer to make this possible. But as you’ve probably already guessed, this isn’t the case.

I do have an answer to the question, but it’s probably not the one you were hoping for. In short, here it is: Apart from black-hat strategies and techniques that will likely get your permanently banned in Google, there’s no surefire way to get your keywords ranking quickly.

It wasn’t long ago that websites could rank relatively quickly for their chosen keywords; often by simply creating keyword-rich content and pointing a few links with keyword-rich anchor text to it. But since Google launched its Panda and Penguin algorithms, there are no more ‘quick wins’ in the SEO industry.

The competition across all industries is simply too stiff for white-hat tactics to produce these sorts of quick results anymore. Unless you’re the top dog with the top marketing budget compared to all your competitors, you’re never going to get those top rankings for highly-trafficked, competitive keywords.

This doesn’t mean you should give up on your SEO efforts, though. Just because you may not be able to rank for highly competitive keywords doesn’t mean there’s no hope for improving your search engine rankings and increasing your organic search traffic.

Following are the two SEO strategies I recommend to increase your overall search rankings as quickly and effectively as possible in today’s post-Penguin and post-Panda era of SEO.

1. Focus on Long-Tail Keywords

You probably already know this, but it’s so important it bears repeating. While ranking for even two or three-word phrases may not be as attainable anymore as it was just a few years ago, focusing on longer, more detailed keyword queries should be within your grasp. And because long-tail keywords tend to be more specific and targeted to the actual intent of the searcher, these visitors will be more likely to convert.

Rather than focusing on building keyword-specific pages, focus instead on building content that does a great job of covering all angles of a particular topic. Instead of using one or two keywords over and over again within your content, think about all the long-tail keyword variations that relate to that topic, and use them each within your content once. This will require you to perform some keyword research and know how to identify long-tail keywords. Here are some articles that will help with that:

Articles that focus on all aspects of a topic, thereby using LSI and long-tail keywords within it, will be regarded as more reputable, thorough, and relevant than those that simply use a few competitive keywords repeatedly.

Keep in mind that as search engines continue to move toward accommodating voice search (like Apple’s Siri), long-tail keywords and search will become even more important. This will mean focusing on natural language queries like ‘What’s the best Italian restaurant in Phoenix’ rather than ‘Italian food Phoenix’.

According to John Wiley, the lead designer for Google search, 15% of queries submitted to Google, on a daily basis, are brand new queries that Google has never received before. That amounts to 500 million new search queries every day that have never before been searched for. With the rise of mobile and spoken queries, that number figures to only increase in the future.

In my article, The Rise of the Long-tail Keyword for SEO, I made the claim that long-tail keywords are the new “right” way to target keywords for SEO campaigns. And how do you target long-tail keywords? By publishing lots of amazing, long-form, relevant content related to your industry that adds value for your target audience.

It may take years and a giant marketing budget to ever hope to rank for a highly-trafficked, competitive keyword like “car insurance.” But if you target the keyword “car insurance for a teenager while traveling abroad,” you just might find yourself at the top of the rankings in a much shorter amount of time; there’s a lot less competition for long-tail keywords, and as such, the path to the top is much easier and faster.

2. Create Buzz Through Brand Mentions

While there’s no doubt that inbound links are an important ranking factor for SEO, their power has been diluted by other ranking factors, as well as algorithms designed to detect manipulative links. We’ve learned from a patent recently filed by Google that a shift is coming in terms of how Google will determine a site’s authority.

Whereas historically incoming (followed) links have determined a site’s authority, this patent indicates that ‘implied links’ will also soon be used. These links may include “nofollowed” links, or even simple brand mentions or citations.

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